Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Origins And Development Of John F. Kennedy And Lyndon B. Johnson's Perceptions Of American Foreign Policy Toward East Asia, Juan C. Razo Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson focused extensively on foreign affairs in East Asia related to China, Laos, and Vietnam. Examining the development of their respective perceptions proved instrumental in comprehending their approaches to the geopolitics of the region. The overall structure of this thesis includes an analysis of their tenure in Congress, a breakdown of the first-half of Kennedy’s presidency, an emphasis on the transition period between Kennedy and Johnson, an examination of Johnson’s presidency, and concluding with a detailed comparison of their foreign policy toward East Asia. Their differing perceptions to the regional geopolitics …

The Smuggler Journals: Transgressing And Policing The Border In The Rio Grande Valley, Lupe Alberto Flores

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis summarizes recent human smuggling scholarship and provides ethnographic insights into migrant smuggling in a border zone that is my home. Through exploring my own experiences and observations of smuggling and militarized border policing, and those of other interlocutors in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, I advance nuanced understandings of the symbiotic processes of irregular migration and of the people who brokerage a great deal of these journeys across militarized borders. I analyze fieldnotes that highlight the quotidian realms in which gender and power play out when irregular migration takes place and argue that acts of border …

Building A History: A Case Study Of Manufactured History In Texas, Gregg L. Carter

Theses and Dissertations

Building a History is a case study that seeks to examine Texas mytho-history, and the subsequent historical memory it engenders, from the perspective of Nationalism. Specifically, this paper addresses two periods in Texas’ historical past—beginning with the period of Anglo colonialization of Texas and the subsequent rebellion against Mexican authority, (1820–1836), and transitioning to the progressive era, (1890–1936).

This thesis demonstrates that during progressive era, Anglo-Texans began manufacturing an alternative historical narrative that blended Judeo-Christian and Puritan mytho-symbolism with Euro-centric notions of socio-political and ethnic superiority. This process of manufacturing and legitimizing historical myth in Texas reveals a characteristic similarity …

Hablando De Negocios: Three Rio Grande Valley Businesses During The Great Depression, 1929-1939, Karla A. Lira

Theses and Dissertations

The Rio Grande Valley is in the South most tip of Texas and borders Northern Mexico, it includes Willacy, Cameron, Hidalgo, and Starr Counties. Scholars have focused on gender, agriculture, and labor of the area. However, historians have failed to research the region through a business perspective during the Great Depression. This thesis then seeks to analyze ways in which the Great Depression affected the Rio Grande Valley through the research of two stores and one business in the area: The Manuel Guerra Store, Edelstein’s furniture store, and John Shary’s land selling business. Its objective will fill an existing gap …

Forgot My Tribe: Meditations On Hip Hop And La Frontera, Arnulfo Daniel Segovia

Theses and Dissertations

This study of my life untangles threads of influence which have brought me to my present state of being. I utilize autohistoria-teoria to reflect on the processes of learning and schooling in my life, and weigh them against processes of unlearning and deschooling which I explore through hip hop ways of being – all of which are rooted in my life’s process of coming to love the Rio Grande Valley. This effort is to find solid ground to stand upon as I set off from an academic journey into civilian life with a central concern: At the individual level, how …

Elevating My Chicana Feminist Consciousness Through The United States' First Female Show Mariachi, Monica A. Fogelquist

Theses and Dissertations

Mariachi Reyna de Los Ángeles is widely recognized as the premier all-female mariachi in the world. In my thesis, I examine the gendered implications of a female group directed by a man and their relation to Mexican and Mexican American gender ideologies. Many of the ideas on gender roles traditionally inculcated in previous generations of Mexican and Mexican Americans are still manifest in the ways in which the group functions. Through my personal testimony as a former member, and accounts by other past and present members of Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles, I argue that Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles …

Phoenix Ink: Psychodynamic Motivations For Tattoo Attainment By Survivors Of Trauma, December Renee Maxwell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tattoos adorn people from all over the world and date back as far as the Stone Age. Tattoos adorn people from all over the world and motivations for tattoo attainment have been studied recently. Still, there remains limited research on the potential therapeutic properties of tattoo attainment, particularly for survivors of sexual trauma. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experience of the tattoo process for survivors of sexual trauma and their motivations for tattoo attainment. This qualitative exploratory study interviewed both survivors of sexual trauma (N=10) and tattoo artists (N=7) to gain a wider perspective on the …

Remote Sensing Insights Into Storage Capacities Among Plains Village Horticulturalists, Adam Wiewel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Maize was a fundamental component of the diet and economy of Middle Missouri Plains Village groups, sedentary farmers with settlements along the Missouri River during the last millennia. More than a century of study has contributed to our understanding of agricultural production among these peoples, but little effort has been made to consider temporal variation in production. Such an understanding is crucial to examining changes that occurred before and after the arrival of colonists and their trade goods in the seventeenth century. Plains archaeologists have suggested that the storage capacity of Middle Missouri villages increased during the sixteenth through the …

Cultural Reimagining And Literary Voice: Southeastern Tribal Women Negotiate Cultural, Social, And Political Identity Through Literature, Linda Sue Shaffer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines literature written by women who identify with Native tribes that originally inhabited, and in some cases continue to inhabit, the southeastern area of what is now known as the United States. The analysis presented in each chapter applies tribally specific methods used for creating knowledge within the particular discourse community being represented through literature. The project also employs the perspectives of Native literary scholars to consider the ways in which the roles and lives of Native women have been influenced by Euro-American values and to analyze the ways in which these female authors engage literature as a …

Statements In Stone: The Politics Of Architecture In Charlemagne's Aachen, Mary Katherine Tipton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Statements in Stone is an intersectional and preliminary study of the architecture and Social aspects of the palatine complex of Aachen Germany during the reign of Charlemagne approximately spanning from the 790s to 814CE. The interplay between built space and its Social uses inform the larger Social understandings and interpretations of power and authority. Court poetry written by contemporaries and courtiers of Charlemagne allow readers to glimpse the court as it moved through and interacted with the built environment. Architectural precedents inform the connotations associated with the spaces of Aachen, while spatial theory will provide a framework for understanding the …

Refusing To Be Dispossessed: African American Land Retention In The Us South From Reconstruction To World War Ii, Camille Goldmon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African Americans in the South were tied to the land during slavery and after emancipation. Many felt that land ownership was the key to freedom. For decades, black farmers strove for land ownership, in many cases falling prey to sharecropping and tenancy agreements in the meantime. Despite this drive toward independent farming, however, since 1920, there has been a steady decline in the number of black farm owners. This trend is especially prevalent in the Southern United States. The black farm owners who persevered through periods of economic, social, and political turmoil were able to, for varying reasons, navigate those …

Exploring Winery Operation As A Diversification Option For Native American Tribal Enterprises, Randi M. Combs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to examine the perceptions of tribal members regarding the strengths, challenges, and opportunities presented by tribal winery operation. Specifically, issues of business diversification, marketing, perceived barriers to success, potential benefits to the tribe, and the role of agriculture in the preservation of tribal heritage were considered. A modified mixed-methods exploratory sequential research model was used to collect and organize data in two phases. Phase 1 quantitative data was used to inform the development of a Phase 2 qualitative interview protocol. Phase 1 found a significant relationship between a higher income level and a lower …

The Net Of Nostalgia: Class, Culture, And Political Alienation And Nostalgia In Contemporary Latino And South Asian American Literature, Farzana Akhter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Generally thought of as a yearning for recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia is seen as a sentiment that impairs living in the present. And in case of immigrants, nostalgia is thought of as a debilitating form of escapism and an inability to adapt to change and mobility. In this dissertation, contesting against the prevalent concept, I argue that immigrant nostalgia is neither a colored memory (Dyson 117) nor a romance with one’s own fantasy (Boym xiii); rather, immigrant nostalgia has a socio-economic and political underpinning. By exploring the various nuances of immigrant experience delineated in the literary works of South …

The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Journey: Path To Conocimiento A Testimonio Of Queer Heroics, Veronica Solis

Theses and Dissertations

As an auto-historia testimonio, I approach my work from my experience with performance poetry where I used my personal experiences to express the continuum of gender through poetry. I also draw from Gloria Anzaldúa’s “path of conocimiento” as a framework for my narrative stories as queer rites of passage.

Through Northern Eyes: Robert E. Lee And The Northern Press, Steven D. Sheller

Theses and Dissertations

Most historians would agree that it is an anomaly in history how Robert E. Lee became an American icon. General Lee was the commander of a rebel army that was trying to split the country he had once loyally served into two. Even after being defeated at the Battle of Appomattox, instead of Lee suffering the normal fate of all failed revolutionaries, he was pardoned and allowed to continue to live in his native Virginia. Over a short amount of time after General Lee’s death he was elevated from rebel to hero. The origins of this can be traced back …

Reclaiming The Dark: Defining Darkness As Feminist Agency Within The Garden Of Eden, "Never Marry A Mexican," And Selected Social Media Platforms, Teresa Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis explores Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden (1986), Sandra Cisneros’ “Never Marry a Mexican” (1991), and the social media platforms of Tomi Lahren, The Root, and Xicanisma on Facebook and Instagram . In my exploration of these texts and platforms, I define darkness within its multiple definitions primarily via the theme of destruction, sexuality, and/or a literal racial, physical darkness. Furthermore, in this project I challenged the traditionally pejorative analysis of darkness within American literature and provided a chronological presentation of the transformative function darkness imparts on these two texts and selected social media platforms. Ultimately, reclaiming …

How To Live: Growing Up As A Brown Gay Boy In A Conservative, Traditional And Christian Homophobic Family, Felipe Vasquez

Theses and Dissertations

How to Live: Growing Up as a Brown Gay Boy in a Conservative, Traditional Christian and Homophobic Family chronicles the life of one brown, gay boy as he navigated culture, racism, religion and traditional family values growing up. Felipe Vasquez, the boy, narrator and author, analyzes events in his life which guided his choices and left lasting impressions. In the chapters hereby presented, he deals with being gay in a machismo culture, being Latino in the 80s, 90s and present day United States and dealing with mental health in a culture that tends to misunderstand mental illness.

Modern Palestinian Filmmaking In A Global World, Sarah Frances Hudson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation employs a comprehensive approach to analyze the cinematic accent of feature length, fictional Palestinian cinema and offers concrete criteria to define the genre of Palestinian fictional film that go beyond traditional, nation-centered approaches to defining films. Employing Arjun Appardurai’s concepts of financescapes, technoscapes, mediascapes, ethnoscapes, and ideoscapes, I analyze the filmic accent of six Palestinian filmmakers: Michel Khleifi, Rashid Masharawi, Ali Nassar, Elia Suleiman, Hany Abu Assad, and Annemarie Jacir. After a detailed examination of each filmmaker’s body of work, I examine the trends that occur across the genre that have the greatest impact on the Palestinian filmic …

Measuring Racial Competence In Athletic Academic Support Staffs, Aquasia Thornhill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Critical Race Theory, a theoretical framework that has been gaining much recognition in sport literature, is a useful and beneficial tool in discussing race and racism. To better understand the context in which academic support staff appreciate the functionality and significance of race, the present study measures the racial competence of athletic academic support staffs. This research study explores the need to integrate a model such as Critical Race Theory that promotes “racial competency” among academic support staffs working closely with student-athletes of color, and measures Color-Blind Racial Attitudes that may have effects on the types of interactions individuals are …

Pottery Is King: Bevel Rim Bowls And Power In Early Urban Societies Of The Ancient Near East, Arianna M. Stimpfl

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is about how material objects, specifically ceramics, are used to create and perpetuate political power of the ruling class. My research will demonstrate how bevel rim bowls were a form of structural violence in the Uruk/Protoliterate period Mesopotamia by forcing the people to create the very vessels they needed to obtain their rations. These vessels were widely used throughout the region, and as of yet their exact function is unknown. The Uruk period in Mesopotamia was a time of great change. Large urban centers were being formed and people were coming together in a new way to live …